HOLLYWOOD — Two-time Academy Award-winning director John Lasseter was honored with a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on November 1. Lasseter directs and creatively oversees all films and associated projects from Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios.
He made his feature directorial debut in 1995 with “Toy Story” and has gone on to direct “A Bug’s Life,” “Toy Story 2”, “Cars” and “Cars 2.” Lasseter’s executive-producing credits include “Monsters, Inc.,” “Finding Nemo,” “The Incredibles,” “Ratatouille,” “WALL•E,” Bolt” and “Up.” “Up” was the recipient of two Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Score.
Lasseter also served as executive producer for Disney’s Oscar-nominated films “The Princess and the Frog” and “Tangled” as well as for Pixar’s most recent Academy Award-winner for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song, “Toy Story 3.”
Lasseter wrote, directed and animated Pixar’s first short films, including “Luxo Jr.,” “Red’s Dream,” “Tin Toy” and “Knick Knack.” “Luxo Jr.” was the first three-dimensional computer-animated film ever to be nominated for an Academy Award when it was nominated for Best Animated Short Film in 1986; “Tin Toy” was the first three-dimensional computer-animated film ever to win an Academy Award when it was named Best Animated Short Film in 1988. Lasseter has executive-produced all of the studio’s subsequent shorts, including “Boundin’,” “One Man Band,” “Lifted,” “Presto,” “Partly Cloudy,” “Day & Night” and the Academy Award-winning “Geri’s Game” (1997) and “For the Birds” (2000).
Under Lasseter’s supervision, Pixar’s animated feature and short films have earned a multitude of critical accolades and film-industry honors. Lasseter himself received a Special Achievement Oscar in 1995 for his inspired leadership of the “Toy Story” team. He and the rest of the screenwriting team of “Toy Story” also earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay, the first time an animated feature had ever been recognized in that category.
Prior to the formation of Pixar in 1986, Lasseter was a member of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm Ltd., where he designed and animated “The Adventures of Andre and Wally B,” the first-ever piece of character-based three-dimensional computer animation, and the computer-generated Stained Glass Knight character in the 1985 Steven Spielberg-produced film “Young Sherlock Holmes.”
Lasseter was part of the inaugural class of the Character Animation program at California Institute of the Arts and received his B.F.A. in film in 1979. Lasseter is the only two-time winner of the Student Academy Award for Animation, for his CalArts student films “Lady and the Lamp” (1979) and “Nitemare” (1980).